The Vatican's rigid opposition to euthanasia has come under fire from within its own ranks after it denied a religious funeral to a paralysed man who had asked to be removed from a life-saving respirator.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the influential former archbishop of Milan, said on Sunday that terminally ill patients should be given the right to refuse treatments and that the doctors who assist them should be protected by law.

On December 20 a doctor in Rome unplugged the respirator which for many years had kept alive Piergiorgio Welby, who had muscular dystrophy.

Although the Vatican has agreed that protracted treatments for the terminally ill can be ended by doctors if no cure is possible, the Vicariate of Rome denied Welby's family permission to hold a Catholic funeral, claiming Welby's "desire to end his life, expressed frequently and publicly, is contrary to Catholic doctrine".

In an article published on Sunday in the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore, Cardinal Martini, 79, said cases like Welby's were likely to multiply, and that the church "should pay closer attention to the issues".

Cardinal Martini, who suffers from Parkinson's Disease, called for Italy to follow France's example and introduce legislation allowing patients to request the ending of treatments.

Cardinal Martini said he opposed active euthanasia, where a patient requests a fatal injection, but also opposed "unreasonably obstinate" treatments that keep the terminally ill alive.

"Avoiding drawn-out therapy need not mean looking for death, but accepting that you cannot stop it," he said.

An Italian court decided in December that Welby had the right to refuse therapy, but he could not exercise it because there was no law explicitly permitting it. The doctor who unplugged his respirator, Marco Riccio, is under investigation by Italian medical authorities.

The case divided Italian politics, with government coalition parties such as the Radical Party defending Dr Riccio's action and Luca Volonte, from the conservative Christian Democrat Union, calling it "murder".

The row came as the Italian parliament was set to debate a bill for living wills which would allow people to specify treatment preferences in the case of an incapacitating illness.

The Pope appeared to refer to the Welby case in a Christmas Day speech when he said: "What are we to think of those who choose death in the belief that they are celebrating life?"